Orlando Counseling : Harmony Counseling Group

When beginning EMDR therapy (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), it is very important to spend some times on building mental and tangible resources for yourself. One mental resource that has been helpful is to meditate on what makes you happy. Thinking about these things with imagery is very helpful in creating the lingering sense that you have actually done these activities, or have accomplished those certain goals, when done with slow, relaxing bilateral stimulation. So what makes you happy?! Make a list today!

For appointments for counseling and therapy appointments in the Orlando, Winter Park, FL areas,please contact Harmony Counseling Group here. Or call 407.310.0363.

One of the primary goals of FBPDA has always been to help promote new research so that individuals with BPD, their families, and mental health professionals can educate themselves about this disorder.  

Today we have an article that we’d like to make you aware of. “Social cognition in BPD: evidence for disturbed recognition of the emotions, thoughts, and intentions of others” is a very interesting open-access piece that was recently published in Frontiers of Behavioral Neuroscience. 

If you would like us to e-mail you this article or are interested in accessing additional research about BPD, please contact us today.

For appointments for counseling and therapy appointments in the Orlando, Winter Park, FL areas,please contact Harmony Counseling Group here.

FBPDA is pleased to announce our first retreat for family members and friends of individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Coming Together will be held on March 12, 2011 from 9:00 am until 5:00 pm at the Hilton in Naples and will be limited to just 12 people. The cost for the day is $150 per person or $250 for couples.

This intimate event is appropriate for anyone who loves someone with BPD and is interested in learning more about this serious mental illness. Each attendee will receive a copy of Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change, educational materials, and lunch is also included. Our special guest will be Boca Raton-based DBT therapist, Anna Traylor. Dr. Traylor, in discussing validation, will teach this important skill to family members.

The day will consist of interactive exercises and personalized learning designed to encourage and support you as you help care for someone with BPD-even if they are not in treatment.

Please register today for this unique opportunity by contacting us at amanda.smith@fbpda.org.

This event is dedicated to the memory of Duncan N. Simic 1972-2008.

Most respectfully,

Amanda L. Smith
Florida Borderline Personality Disorder Association

P.S. FBPDA continues to need your financial support in order to provide outstanding opportunities for public education, outreach, and support. Would you please make a tax deductible contribution today?

For appointments for counseling and therapy appointments in the Orlando, Winter Park, FL areas,please contact Harmony Counseling Group here.

Please join us in our fight against eating disorders during our inaugural walk to kick off Eating Disorder Awareness Week!  The walk is on Sunday, February 20th at Lake Eola in downtown Orlando and begins at 10:00.  Our goal is to raise $25,000 so that we may grant 5 scholarships to patients suffering from an eating disorder and need in-patient treatment, but their insurance carrier is denying their request/claims.
 
For more information, please visit:
 
http://neda.nationaleatingdisorders.org/site/TR?fr_id=1270&pg=entry
 
If you are interested in participating, you can create your own team on that website; if you are interested in donating to the cause, you can do that from there as well.  If you are interested in helping in any fashion (volunteering, donating gifts, etc.), please contact me as soon as possible.
 
Also, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask me.
 
Thank you!

Heather Bomar Stamm
EDNCF Treasurer, Outreach Committee Co-Chair
http://edncf.com/

For appointments for counseling and therapy appointments in the Orlando, Winter Park, FL areas,please contact Harmony Counseling Group here.

New research about BPD is always exciting for us!

A recently-published article in Behavior Research and Therapy titled ‘Comparison of different strategies to decrease negative affect and increase positive affect in women with borderline personality disorder’ looks at what is most effective when it comes to emotional regulation strategies commonly used in cognitive behavior therapy.

University of Freiburg authors Jacob, Arntz, Arendt, et al. note in part that:

The most interesting result was the differential impact of the positive memory image on positive emotions. Clinical research typically focuses on negative emotions. However, a focus on positive emotions is possibly very rewarding, as positive emotions increase stress resilience and have positive effects the psychological health (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). Our results hint at a general capacity of BPD patients to experience positive affect in spite of their strong negative affect. Similarly Ng (2009) found, that in the context of a pleasant situation (but not in the context of an unpleasant situation), individuals with high neuroticism were capable of feeling as much positive emotions as low-neuroticism individuals.

and:

The results speak in favor of broadening the idea of emotional change and of applying positive imagery exercises more intensively as emotion regulation strategy in the treatment of severe emotional disturbances. This conclusion is supported by results of Dalebroux, Goldstein, and Winner (2009), who found that focusing on positive images through art was more effective in reducing negative emotions than venting.

They conclude that:

The positive memory image increased positive emotions significantly stronger than counting colors and distracting.

While holidays can be very stressful, they can also be a source of comfort and joy when family members and individuals with BPD mindfully take time to remember pleasant events and fun activities.

Mental health professionals can help elicit short lists positive memories that patients can access again and again when they are most dysregulated.

Article compliments of the Florida Borderline Personality Disorder Association.

For appointments for counseling and therapy appointments in the Orlando, Winter Park, FL areas,please contact Harmony Counseling Group here.

This from Amanda Smith, President of the Florida Borderline Personality Disorder Association (FBPDA):

Please join us at St. Petersburg College’s EpiCenter in Clearwater on Friday, November 19 at 8:00 am for our latest professional conference.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) was developed by Marsha Linehan, PhD to address the needs of those patients with chronic suicidal, self-injurious, and other dysfunctional behaviors. DBT has been proven to be highly effective in reducing suicidal behavior, instances of self-harm, and emergency psychiatric hospitalizations in patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, substance abuse, and eating disorders.

The conference will provide a one-day overview of DBT in addition to providing a synopsis of recently published research supporting this evidence-based treatment.

Individuals diagnosed with BPD and their families are strongly encouraged to attend.

Conference Sponsors

FBPDA is honored to have the following fine organizations and mental health professionals participate as conference sponsors:

3East and the Gunderson Residence at McLean Hospital

Timberline Knolls

Topics and Speakers

· Mindfulness: What Is It and Why Is It So Important? Stacy Louk, PhD, LMHC
· Dialectical Behavior Therapy Adapted for Substance Abuse. Nancy Gordon, LCSW
· Empirical Support for Linehan’s Biosocial Theory. Mark Reeves, PhD
· Left-Handed Chopsticks: Adapting DBT to Eating Disorders Treatment. Anna Traylor, PsyD
· Skills Training for Clients with BPD: Teaching Adaptive Coping Strategies. Aaron Norton, LMHC, CAP
· Family Matters: Education and DBT Skills for Relatives. Perry Hoffman, PhD
· My Dialectical Life: Before, During, and After DBT. Cristin Manzolati, BA

For  appointments for counseling and therapy appointments in the Orlando, Winter Park, FL areas,please contact Harmony Counseling Group here.

Wise Mind Skills: Opening to Understanding and Willingness to Feel

We must be willing to dive deep and feel, really feel what is underneath. This is where you will be set free.

There are times when we may find ourselves struggling or even fighting with our thoughts and emotions. We may feel that something must be done in a certain way or not at all, or there may be some other situation that feels absolutely black and white. But life is not this way—it’s the way we are looking at our experiences that is causing the turmoil within us. When we become aware that the struggle we are having is with ourselves, we can turn our attention to the source in order to solve the problem, but we must be being willing to look where we need to and feel emotions that may make us uncomfortable at first. Then we can choose to really open ourselves to understanding all the options we can imagine. We are likely to discover that we are resisting something based on a limited understanding, and we must then open ourselves to willingness.

When we are willing to look at all the possibilities, we also become willing to accept that there is room for more than we can imagine. We can release ourselves from the grip we had on our emotions and stop limiting ourselves. We may have been unwilling to experience feeling loss, confusion, fear, or even joy for some reason or another, but when we realize that our understanding was limited we allow space for the universe to move in our lives.

Opening ourselves to willingness may feel like we are surrendering or abandoning all that we believed. But at the same time it is an act of power and courage because it is a conscious choice we make about how to apply our personal will. Being willing is to be in a state of willing something into creation. It is at once allowing ourselves to be while also choosing to direct our energy in a focused way. It is being and doing from a place of openness, where we can work with the universe rather than resist it. It is an open hand rather than one that is clenched into a fist. When we make a step toward willingness, we open ourselves to truth, possibility, and the movement of the wise universe in and through our lives.

For  appointments for counseling and therapy appointments in the Orlando, Winter Park, FL areas,please contact Harmony Counseling Group here.

This from Amanda Smith, President of the Florida Borderline Personality Disorder Association:

FBPDA is excited to recommend Valerie Porr’s excellent new book Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change.

Valerie is the founder and president of TARA and she’s worked to help educate families about BPD since 1994.

Family members and friends of individuals diagnosed with BPD are welcome join us for a conference call with Ms. Porr on Wednesday, September 29 at 7:00 pm EST. If you’d like to participate, the dial-in number is (218) 862-7200 (218) 862-7200 and the conference code is 842308.

For additional books that we recommend, please go to our BPD Resource page on our web site.
P.S. We’d love to see you at our fall conference Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Success Strategies for Patients. 

For  appointments for counseling and therapy appointments in the Orlando, Winter Park, FL areas,please contact Harmony Counseling Group here.

This exerpt, by an Approved EMDRIA Trainer regarding the effectiveness of EMDR:

“EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is the most effective psychotherapy I have found in my 31 years of practice. As I teach new students I continue to learn from them in their application of EMDR.”

“Another therapist, who was running a detoxification program for substance abuse, started using some techniques used in the preparation phase in EMDR in ‘detox’ and found that this better prepared people for substance abuse treatment. The holidays are usually times where patients leave against medical advice. In his experience people stopped leaving treatment when they had developed a safe place and learned to relax. This student also used EMDR on people who had relapsed and found that people were better able to reengage in treatment when they had worked through the guilt and shame associated with relapse. It is very exciting to receive such positive feedback from the effects of EMDR.”

“Complex trauma is the most difficult to treat. One must go slowly with people that have suffered complex trauma. Many people have different levels of dissociation with a fragile ego structure. EMDR may be used with this population but only after extended preparation, and for the therapist, more education on using EMDR with complex trauma. Combining EMDR with ego state therapy helps complex cases progress, not just mask the symptoms with medication.”

“As a therapist you learn many techniques but some are more helpful than others. Certainly over the years cognitive behavioral therapy has proven to be effective and is science based. EMDR combines so many different therapies such as cognitive behavioral, mindfulness, psychodynamic, gestalt, body work, just to name a few. The application and timing is so important to help a client move from a state of powerlessness to feeling empowered. Seeing people take power, control, and responsibility for their life and no longer experiencing life as a victim is what sold me on this therapy and changed the course of my career.”

Counseling and therapy services in the Winter Park, Orlando areas. For appointments, you may contact Harmony Counseling Group.

FBPDA is excited to announce the release of two new books about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) that actively promote and encourage recovery.

Kiera Van Gelder is the author of Buddha & the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating.

Many of our conference attendees have had the pleasure of listening to Kiera share her story. Without a doubt, her book will be an important source of hope and inspiration for individuals diagnosed with BPD, their families, and dedicated mental health professionals for years to come.

Another book we are very happy to recommend is Valerie Porr’s Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change. Valerie is the founder and president of TARA and she’s worked to help educate families about BPD since 1994. Her book is published by Oxford University Press.

 For counseling and therapy appointments in the Orlando, Winter Park, FL  

areas, please visit Harmony Counseling Group, LLC for information on DBT and EMDR services.